


It Won't Mind

by InsidetheLocket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 10:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsidetheLocket/pseuds/InsidetheLocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the Impala were alive, which it isn't, it would be accepting. Loving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Won't Mind

An automobile is not a sentient being. Often, though, like toys or dolls or trinkets, we personify them. Call them “Baby.” Care for them. Love them. But what we really love is the symbolism they hold, the truths of which they remind us.

The destined owner of a particular car was one who, impossibly, was present during its purchase from a used lot. Impossibly, because he had not yet been born. The smallest touch of future skin on past metal is one we like to believe is remembered. By the car, that is; one does not easily forget what he should never have known. It is hoped that the car will remember that touch when a very much younger hand first struggles into the seat, and that the car will know it to be the same one.

It won’t mind when its windows are streaked by small grubby fingers, or when a plastic army man as green and precious as an emerald is shoved permanently into an ash tray. It won't mind when when its airways rattle with the sound of misplaced Legos, or even when another small set of hands, with whom the car also comes to love, carves “S.W.” beside the “D.W.” of its owner, sitting as close together as the vandals always do in the backseat. It won’t mind because it is their reprieve. For a short amount of time the children can forget the arsenal hidden in the trunk--and why it exists in the first place. So it won’t mind when its boys—because they are  _its_  boys—fall asleep to soft rock inside it. Because it knows that within its doors is the only true haven they have; the only place they truly feel safe.

It won’t mind when, due to its age, something fails and “D.W.” has to fix it. It’s just happy to be fixed, even if it’s “S.W.” elbow deep in grease instead. It won’t blink a headlight when its owner takes a tire iron to the windows or the hood, because it knows repairs can be made easily enough, and though catharsis may not fix the hands which grip the rod the same way they’ve recently been gripping its steering wheel, at least it might help.

We like to think that the car is proud to be a protector. That it feels useful knowing that conversations that could never occur elsewhere are freely discussed inside and around its creaking doors. That it misses its owner while the younger one—who is now much bigger—drives in his absence. It doesn’t even mind when he installs an “iPod dock,” though it might be a little disappointed that “D.W.” does not like the new addition. 

The car, we would hope, also takes pride in the comfort it gives when either of them wakes with a scream he trapped in his throat.

When blood and spit and holy water splash across its surface, when the only roads to a long forgotten asylum kick up columns of dust, whenever we think the car would take up its owner’s characteristic “son-of-a-bitch,” it wouldn't mind so much.

Through crashes and beatings and neglect, through the nightmares and dreamscapes and drive-thrus and one grungy motel parking lot after another, the most important object in the world has not felt the pain and joy experienced by those who traveled in it, across a country it could not see. A 1967 Chevrolet Impala is not conscious of the fact that, sometimes, the forces of Heaven and Hell and the earth they warred over sat side by side in the backseat—and sometimes did more than sit.

But to its boys there is no argument, “Baby” is more than just a car.

A wise man once said “family don’t end with blood.” Why should it end at humanity?


End file.
